Monday, February 26, 2018

I was assigned the task of upgrading an existing client's large, multisite 8.1 rev. 160519 (8.1 Update-3) instance to 8.2 rev. 171121 (8.2 Update-6). This particular client wasn't ready to go all the way to version 9.0, but will do so in the near future.

It took me longer than anticipated to get things up and running, simply because I needed to perform some updates to their custom solution.

Side Notes

The Sitecore solution that I was upgrading was using Castle Windsor as the Inversion of Control container along with Glass Mapper.

After it completed, I proceeded to install the "Sitecore 8.2 rev. 171121.update" update package using the installation wizard: /sitecore/admin/UpdateInstallationWizard.aspx.

You will need to unzip the Sitecore 8.2 rev. 171121 (update package).zip in order to obtain the "update" file that Sitecore requires.

After clicking the "Analyze the package" button, I opted NOT to install files as I preferred to start with a clean copy of the web root of Sitecore 8.2 Update-6.

I feel like this is a cleaner approach as it helps avoid having legacy cruft make its way into the new instance.

The package installation completed without any issues.

Instance Preparation and Comparing Files

I proceeded to stand up a clean version of Sitecore 8.2 Update-6 alongside my legacy 8.1 Update-3 instance and used the Beyond Compare app to compare the files.

Apart from the Web.Config, the Sitecore.config was the next file where I saw the most differences.

Pro Tip: It is best practice is to move any differences that you find in vanilla config files to separate patch files. That way, life will be much easier for future upgrades.

Updating your Custom Solution

As some of the config files compared could exist in your custom solution, it is best to update the files in your solution as soon as you have completed your comparisons / merges on your Sitecore instance.

I worked in a new branch in source control, so that I could gradually update the files, and commit them as I made progress.

Sitecore 8.2 moved to .NET Framework version 4.5.2 from 4.5 in 8.1. So the target framework in each of the solution's projects needed to be updated:

A lot of time was spent making sure the correct NuGet packages were loaded so that references where correct. As I was working with 8.2 rev. 171121, I matched my NuGet packages to the version by using the 8.2.171121, "NoReferences" packages.

As Jeremy Davis pointed out: "...the .NoReferences packages include the binary files but don’t have dependencies on other packages. So if you want to pick out individual DLLs without having to import all of the other assemblies that file depends on, choose these packages. It’s a bit more effort to manually add each of these that you need – but it means your project only refers to the specific files you want."

Note: When updating packages like WebGrease for example, it is important to match the assembly version in the Sitecore bin folder to the NuGet package versions.

Support for Solr out-of-the box with this patch was added from Sitecore 8.2 Update-1 on, so I didn't have to include any configurations and files referencing this patch. Most of my work involved me changing my Solr index configurations

Bye Bye IsPageEditorEditing, Hello IsExperienceEditorEditing

As Darren mentioned in his post, Sitecore depreciated the variables IsPageEditor, and IsPageEditorEditing in Sitecore 8.0 Update 6, but kept the methods in all versions of 8.1.

It would have been nice to have used the Obsolete attribute so that there wouldn't be such a surprise when upgrading to 8.2, and having all your usages of this method break your solution.

The fix was simple enough though. I performed a "find and replace"

From:

Sitecore.Context.PageMode.IsPageEditorEditing

To:

Sitecore.Context.PageMode.IsExperienceEditorEditing

Problems with Castle Windsor

The solution I was working in was using Castle Windsor 3.3.0.51 and Castle Core 3.3.3.58. I opted to update Castle Windsor to version 4.1.0.0 and Castle Core 4.2.1.0 because I wanted the bug fixes and enhancements of the newer releases.

After deploying the updated assemblies to my upgraded Sitecore instance, I ran into the following error:

Could not load file or assembly 'Castle.Windsor, Version=3.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=407dd0808d44fbdc' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference.

Minor Problem with Glass Mapper

In my case, I discovered that I was simply missing the Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc references to the new assembly in the MVC 52 folder in the Nuget package, and the updated assembly in my Sitecore bin folder.

Minor Problem with WebGrease

After making my way through the above-mentioned problems, I ran into a WebGrease version issue.

Inner Exception: Could not load file or assembly 'WebGrease, Version=1.5.2.14234, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

The fix for this was to simply update my assembly binding redirect in the Web.config.

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